Darwin: The Descent of Man (1871)

Charles Darwin&s;s book “The Descent of Man”, appeared about 12 years after the “Origin of Species”. The book is bound together with Darwin’s book on Sexual Selection and Darwin considered both as a single, continuous contribution, for reasons stated at the end of the “Descent”. That Man developed from a primate ancestor was very clear to Darwin all along, and his opinion on this issue was apparently no secret, judging from the strong opposition expressed by his adversaries. Darwin mentioned in his “Autobiography” that he had intended to discuss the development of emotions as a chapter in the “Descent of Man”, but the amount of material had been too large. In a separate book “On the Expression of Emotions in Animals and Man”, published in 1873, Darwin analyzed the similarities of facial and other expressions of fear, anger, affection, and aggression performed involuntarily by animals like dogs, cats, and monkeys, to expression of the same emotions in humans.